The online home of Melissa Cole - award-winning beer and food writer and author of Let Me Tell You About Beer

Monday, 24 September 2012

Hopping for a Heavenly Experience!

Morning beer lovers, I’m super-excited to announce details of my latest collab and how we are launching it.

It’s called Green Goddess and I have once again teamed up with Ilkley to make a slightly bonkers, but hopefully belting, beer.

Collecting the fresh Sovereign hops at the Charles Faram Hop Walk

The beer is named Green Goddess as an obvious reference to the green hops in the beer but also helps highlight the gloriously soft Yorkshire water the brewery uses, with a nod towards the Roman goddess Verbeia of the River Wharfe, which runs through Ilkley,

The process for making this beer started a little unusually, in that the day before brewing I found myself on a train to my second hop walk in a week*

Myself and a bevy of brewers, ate a truly delicious buffet lunch before listening to Mr Hop himself, Paul Corbett of Charles Faram about the UK harvest, which is actually looking surprisingly healthy, my new hero Dr Peter Darby of the Wye Hops research and development facility and the wonderfully passionate Alison Capper, who is subtly overhauling the British Hop Association – which was all very enlightening.

After this, and a mosey around to see the bines and some traditional hop stringing demonstrations, we jumped in the car and drove up to Ilkley (trying not to be lulled to sleep by the soporific effect of the hops) to brew the next day.

The lovely people at Ilkley had sourced some La Chouffe yeast and so, alongside the brewster Harriet, we set to work creating what I hope will be a truly heavenly beer.

As is usual with me, you won’t be surprised to hear that there are a few surprises in the beer, and this time I wanted to add some Szechuan peppercorns, to help underpin the spicy nature of the yeast and bring a little ‘oomph’ to proceedings and also Nigella seeds (also known as Roman coriander, which chimes nicely with the reference to the historic connection we’ve chosen for the name!), for their slightly bitter, lemony aspect.

So, where can you get it? Well, we’ll be launching it on October 3 in London and it will be sitting on the bar alongside my previous Ilkley collab, Siberia, and the brewery’s new, luscious but low ABV, golden beer called Dinner Ale, which is a celebratory brew of the beautiful Nelson Sauvin hop.

Details of the launch venues and timings we’ll be there, at which point Green Goddess will start pouring, are:

*The first hop walk being courtesy of Shepherd Neame, which I thank profusely for a lovely 24-hours of hospitality and you should check out the Kent Green Hop Beer Fortnight website here for more info on that very cool idea.

Enjoyed a glass of Green Goddess in the Old Red Cow, Smithfield the other Friday. Didn't enjoy being half crushed to death in the process. If ever a pub needs extending then the Red Cow is a prime candidate!

I thought you might be interested in a competition AB InBev are running to encourage students to have a go at creating a new beer concept which reflects their university. It seems right up your street really! Innovative, creative and bringing beer to new audiences, I know you're not a student but still thought you might find it interesting! http://www.bestbeercompetition.com/